I am not by any means an expert on PFAS, or, for that matter, the environment. I do however what any bird knows about it, namely, that it is a good idea to not foul your own nest. Remarkably, a lot of people don’t seem to get even that much.
PFAS is short, by the way, for a group of chemicals that have been identified and classified by the U.S. EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, as an emerging contaminant across this nation. We are still learning about the nature of their long-term effects, and we probably will be for a long time. There are indications they could be devastating to our health.
We know that they lead to an increased risk of some cancers in animals, tend to increase cholesterol, decrease fertility rates, and affect the body’s immune system. PFAS chemicals also do not break down in the environment or the body – they just steadily accumulate in our organs.
That is frightening – as is the knowledge that PFAS chemicals are used in everything from fast-food packaging to cleaning supplies. The good news is that usually the amounts of it we are exposed to are quite small, and scientists say you can swim or bathe in water containing PFAS without risk. However, eating and drinking it is another matter.
While the experts are still groping for ways to deal with PFAS, here’s one major problem that isn’t related to the science. I think a lot of people are suffering from information overload.
They are bombarded with worries about the environment, much of which, like PFAS contamination and risk, is hard to understand. So you have some who say that, yes, well, they are concerned about the Asian carp threat and support stronger measures to keep them out.
But they don’t understand the PFAS threat — probably partly because the media has done a poor job of explaining it – and as a result, aren’t demanding new efforts be made to fight it.
Well, that isn’t surprising. Frankly, setting up a system in which the average citizen voter is asked to cherry-pick which environmental issues she or he supports makes little sense. We have to think of the environment in a holistic way, or frankly, we’ll all be doomed.
What that means is that instead of worrying about this issue or that, we need to have a policy of doing whatever is needed to hand this world more or less intact to our children and to the generations that follow. Rather than have a group of state and federal agencies competing for attention and money, I think we need to establish something like powerful cabinet posts at both the federal and state level exclusively concerned with saving and preserving our environment.
Agencies like the EPA and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality could fall under their umbrella, and work together in a coordinated fashion.
We do need to get serious about this; we have, scientists say, only a very limited time before it will be too late to do much about climate change. We also need to do better at educating students at all levels about the environment. We can no longer afford the luxury of leaders who ignore or deny climate change.
Finally, we have one world here, and we are temporary stewards of it. If we damage it beyond repair, that would be the biggest sin of all.
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